The seizures at airports in San Diego, Milwaukee, Houston and Baltimore included “wires, switches, pipes or tubes, cell phone components and dense clay-like substances,” including block cheese, the bulletin said. “The unusual nature and increase in number of these improvised items raise concern.” — from this article
Much more information should be given out about Muslims who are picked up for such things, rather than keep it all hush-hush. Why? Because one way to inhibit Muslim behavior, or to channel some of it in a way that can help us, the Infidels, is to give every such act so much publicity, that the damage to Islam, and to Muslim interests broadly conceived, may make local Muslims turn in or discourage others.
They will do so because the position of Muslims in Western societies will be increasingly endangered, as it should be, by the continued examples of would-be terrorism. The reason Tariq Ramadan counsels patience and temporary pseudo-“integration” into the West, and with a serpentine hiss keeps mentioning some kind of non-existent and absurd-on-its-face construct, so-called “European Islam” (presumably with different, bowdlerized “for European readers only” versions of the Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira), is not because he does not wish for the ultimate triumph of Islam, but because he does.
If, and only if, Muslim interests — conceived broadly — are made to suffer from such dry-runs and attempts at terrorism, will there be much greater Muslim cooperation in monitoring other Muslims in this and other Infidel countries. There should be a great deal of publicity about this, not merely a laconic TSA statement. What, after all, happened to all those people found to be carrying such materials on board planes? Where are they now? What are their names? Disclosure of all this will inevitably do damage to the image of Islam. And only when the damage to Islam is felt to outweigh the benefits of terrorism will two things happen:
1) a sufficient number of Muslims, for practical not moral reasons, will more energetically monitor, and turn in, those who are actively participating in Jihad (so far the cooperation of Muslims has been almost non-existent); and
2) those Muslims who are actively engaged in terrorism may decide that at this point the position of Islam in the West needs not to be further endangered, and that it is better to proceed through use of the Money Weapon, Da’wa, and demographic conquest, rather than by means of the instrument of terrorism.
Terrorists must not only be caught and killed, or caught before they can act, but the instrument of terrorism must be seen to damage the cause of Islam, the image of Islam. And that requires more, much greater, publicity to every single attempt.
Why does the government not understand this? Why do other Western governments not understand? Why do so many newspaper accounts avoid the words “Islam” and “Muslim”? Why do government officials so often do the same? In so doing, in attempting not to annoy Muslims, not to cause “resentment,” they are not winning Muslim cooperation. That can only be won by appeals to self-interest, to making Muslims in the West understand that their position is not quite as secure as they allow themselves to believe, and that once aroused Infidels can and will take whatever measures they deem necessary to protect themselves. And that we, in contradistinction to the Israelis, are not going to endure, as a given, a level of terrorist threat that would make our lives, and has already made many lives, much more unpleasant and physically dangerous than they ought to be or have to be.
There are ways to constrain and deter. One way is to make sure that such acts — the attempts at “dry runs” as well as the real thing — will be on every news program, in every newspaper, and that every such “dry run” attempt will be given publicity that, inexorably, will damage the overall interests of Islam. That is the only way to modify Muslim behavior — not appeals to decency or a “common humanity” that have no basis in the theology of Islam. Ask those who know best — the defectors from Islam. Ask Nonie Darwish, or Ayaan Hirsi Ali. They will set the naive straight.